A real-world VDTN testbed for advanced vehicular services and applications

Many investments are being made in vehicular networking due to social and technological benefits that comes with the development of services and applications for the community, including safety issues. Vehicular Delay-Tolerant Networks (VDTNs) appear as innovative network architecture, able to outline communication challenges caused by issues like variable delays, disruption and intermittent connectivity. In this paper, a real-world VDTN testbed is introduced and it demonstrates and validates the technical concepts of the architecture in a real environment. VDTNs characteristics like IP over VDTN and out-of-band signaling concepts will be demonstrated in a safety service where warning messages are exchanged to notify emergency situations and distress signals. The main goals are to prove the applicability of VDTNs over different environments and evaluate the impacts of a real scenario on protocols stacks and services. The testbed considers three cars equipped with a Bluetooth and Wi-Fi devices, exchanging messages in a pre-defined route.